2015 ACRL Washington and Oregon Joint Conference Program

"Forging Partnerships, Opening Doors"

October 22, 11:00 am - October 23, 1:00 pm

Center for Sustainable Forestry at Pack Forest, Eatonville, WA

Keynote:

Susan Barnes Whyte
Director, Linfield College Libraries

In her address, "Your ACRL: An Update from the Board," our speaker will discuss the ACRL Board, its connection to ACRL membership, and the national organization's vision and opportunities for partnership in our rapidly changing environment. Questions and comments are welcome and expected.

Presentations:

Kristine Nowak (Gonzaga University)

Members of the LGBT community are often marginalized by systems that organize or classify knowledge. Classification systems imply the relative importance of each topic, and therefore create implicit standards for what is considered normal and abnormal. Many classification systems were also created at a set point in the past, and still contain the biases from the time period in which they were originally created. Despite efforts made to update them, particularly by updating subject terms to preferred or non-offensive terms, classification systems still retain the underlying structure that treats LGBT identity as an aberration. This presentation will discuss the historical treatment of LGBT populations in libraries, with special focus on how LGBT topics have been presented and classified in Library of Congress Classification, and what that implies for the role of disadvantaged populations in information structures. I will also discuss the challenges of adequately addressing these biases, as, in many cases, they are built into the core of classification systems. I will discuss these issues in light of a project in which I was involved at the Gay and Lesbian Services Organization of Lexington, Kentucky, and the decisions that were made regarding how to organize a small library collection to best suit the material and the user population. I will conclude with a discussion of some of the ways we can better serve LGBT populations, with the goal of opening information systems to all people.

Justin Otto, Rose Sliger Krause (Eastern Washington University)

Institutional repositories (IR’s) offer opportunities for collaboration between academic libraries, departments and technology specialists. In the case of a new IR, discovering opportunities for partnerships, especially to address a strategic need, can be an effective way to demonstrate the IR’s value to institutional stakeholders. Using the new EWU Digital Commons, EWU Libraries collaborated with the Music Department to provide a permanent home for audio recordings of student music recitals. Presentation topics include strategies for identifying institutional needs the IR can address, identifying collaborative partners with skills and knowledge to move the project forward, and challenges inherent in managing non-text materials.

As the undergraduate experience is shaped by our changing higher education climate, institutions are challenged to support the holistic student experience. Academic libraries have a strong tradition of supporting scholarship and research by working with instruction and collections at a departmental level. However, along with the traditional activities of the libraries at the University of Washington, Odegaard Undergraduate Library is engaged in building and sustaining partnerships with a variety of campus programs and organizations. Our goal is to foster engagement and encourage success for the 7,500 students who walk through our doors every day.

To that end, Odegaard Library is building partnerships to explicitly cut across academic and student life units. We and our partners have created a suite of programs and services that range from musical performances to student wellness outreach to collaborative writing and research assistance. Together, we strive to blur the lines between what students expect from the library and what the library can offer them.

Panels:

The Library and the First-Year Student

Student retention and persistence are critical issues in higher education. Both can be interpreted through a social justice lens when it comes to supporting low-income students, first generation college students, students of color, LGBTQ students, and older students returning to school. In order to support the retention and persistence of all students and help them recognize the library as part of their support system early in their academic careers, librarians should strategically partner with other departments. One approach is to integrate librarians and the library into the first-year student experience. This panel will include librarians from four-year universities and community colleges who will discuss how they are working with first-year students. Topics of discussion will include library instruction sessions, designing first year courses to include information literacy, and partnering with other student service groups like tutoring, writing centers, and diversity offices. The panel will include time for session attendees to share ideas and what is working on their campuses.

A Collaborative Model for Supporting Research Data Management Services at Small Colleges

In line with federal data-sharing requirements, many academic libraries are seeking to provide services to support research data management on campuses. Finding ways to add these services in small academic settings with limited existing staff and technology can be challenging. A collaborative workshop approach was designed to address these challenges to build research data management services in small academic libraries.

Librarians who work to support data services at each of the Northwest Five Consortium (NW5C) schools (Lewis & Clark College, University of Puget Sound, Reed College, Whitman College, and Willamette University) planned a workshop on data management held in June 2015. At the workshop, each school was represented by a team consisting of a librarian, a faculty researcher, undergraduate student researchers, and, optionally, an IT specialist. The two-day workshop was lead by a skilled facilitator who presented an overview of the research data life-cycle as well as an introduction to data management challenges and best practices. Teams had the opportunity to assess their existing data management efforts and consider how to apply the newly learned best practices. Using a dually-collaborative approach, librarians from each of the NW5C institutions worked together to plan the workshop while simultaneously reaching out across their own campuses to identify teams working on a data-intensive research project. Workshop organizers sought to gain a solid foundation for improving their implementation of research data services as well as identifying new avenues for collaboration. The presenters will discuss their successes and struggles in seeking to use the skills gained from their joint project to develop more robust research data services at their institutions and offer insights adaptable by other libraries seeking to establish or strengthen research data services on small campuses.

Librarians and library staff have traditionally cultivated service-oriented relationships with their users, seeking to provide students, faculty, and staff with the support and resources needed for teaching, learning, and research. College campuses also have a legacy of activism, and as our students diversify and engage more intentionally with local and global communities, new movements are emerging. From #BlackLivesMatter, to workers' rights, to the DREAMers undocumented youth movement, these efforts are bringing new struggles and renewed energy to our campuses. Given our user communities’ involvement in these conversations and the library profession’s increasing interest in critical librarianship (as evidenced by #critlib chats and unconferences, as well as a growing body of scholarship), we see opportunities for librarians and library staff to transcend one-way transactional relationships and forge solidarities with their users around social justice. As we participate in these activities, we must critically examine our roles as socially conscious actors who often occupy positions of authority within our institutions and frequently come from a place of privilege. How do we speak with rather than for marginalized members of our campus community and amplify those voices silenced in the conventional discourse of academia? In this workshop, we will define and discuss ally-ship and solidarity and share stories from our institutional context. As a group, we will collectively brainstorm strategies for engaging in social change on campus, methods of achieving buy-in from leadership, and pressure points to be aware of in order to work alongside activists respectfully. Workshop attendees will develop a stronger understanding of how privilege, power, and solidarity function in tandem, discover sustainable approaches to this work, and build connections with other colleagues motivated by the continuing fight against oppression.

Opening Doors with Copyright

Sue Kunda (Western Oregon University)

These days it seems like you can’t do anything on campus without involving copyright issues, and faculty frequently have questions about using others’ (as well as their own) intellectual property. Examples include:

Can I show an entire video to my class?

Can I make a copy of an article and place it in Blackboard (or any other LMS)?

Can I put my students’ work online?

Can I deposit my research into the institutional repository?

What are the consequences of signing a copyright transfer agreement?

Academic librarians who answer questions like these are hot commodities on campus and can find themselves quickly integrated into partnerships with faculty, administration and academic units. But you don’t have to go it alone. The past twenty years of legal scholarship – and a number of high profile court decisions – provide us with a much more reliable fair use standard. Various agencies, organizations and individuals have developed excellent resources for the librarian just starting to learn about copyright issues in higher education as well as those already familiar with the basics.

This session will use active learning techniques to guide you through an understanding of faculty’s common intellectual property concerns, how fair use has moved beyond the checklists used by many libraries, and where to find answers you can trust. Ideas for using copyright questions to form partnerships across campus will also be presented.

Note: While we’ll discuss things to think about when confronted with a copyright question, the session will not focus on answers to specific questions.

Zoe Fisher (Pierce College)

Many librarians think of information literacy as a set of skills and dispositions that include finding, evaluating, and using information. Discipline faculty frequently ask librarians to focus their teaching on the “finding” aspect of information literacy (e.g., using specific information tools and resources) rather than students’ ability to use the information they find.

In this hands-on workshop, attendees will learn classroom routines that will strengthen students’ metacognitive reading skills. These quick, adaptable routines help students make meaning of the sources they find. The routines in this workshop are adapted from the Reading Apprenticeship framework for academic literacy currently being used at Renton Technical College, Pierce College, and other higher education institutions. This workshop is a perfect fit for librarians who are working at institutions that are using the Reading Apprenticeship framework to develop academic literacy skills, or any librarian interested in helping their students become better readers.

After this workshop, attendees will be able to: define metacognition, define the four dimensions of literacy (personal, social, cognitive, knowledge-building), use the Research Reading Log (a metacognitive reading/research tool), and use Talking to the Text (a metacognitive annotation routine).

Let Your Love Open the Door to - Student Development Theories

Many librarians work directly with students, but few have background preparation in how students’ development impacts their learning. Students - particularly traditionally aged college students - undergo a tremendous amount of personal and academic growth by the time they graduate. Students’ cognitive understanding of how knowledge is created and how decisions are made can shift dramatically; their understanding of their own identity can radically evolve; and they are faced with a greater variety of learning environments and more choice in how they will approach their own learning. In addition, the fact that students were never a homogenous group to begin with can make the prospect of creating services for them feel more than a little daunting.

Fortunately, understanding the theories behind the various paths students take during this process of growth can help librarians improve the way they design many user services including instruction sessions, web interfaces, outreach activities, and service points within the library. Understanding the various developmental stages students are going through can also help librarians be more empathetic as well as less quick to blame themselves when an interaction with a student doesn’t go as planned.

This session will focus on three key student development theories. Participants will be introduced to the theories, and will use case studies and examples from their own work with students to brainstorm ways for implementing these theories within their own user services context.